Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens at the Budapest Progressive Governance Conference, October 2004
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born January 18, 1938) is a British sociologist who is renowned for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. He has been described as Britain's best known social scientist since John Maynard Keynes.[1]
Three notable stages can be identified in his academic life. The first one involved outlining a new vision of what sociology is, presenting a theoretical and methodological understanding of that field, based on a critical reinterpretation of the classics. His major publications of that era include Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971) and New Rules of Sociological Method (1976). In the second stage Giddens developed the theory of structuration, an analysis of agency and structure, in which primacy is granted to neither. His works of that period, like Central Problems in Social Theory (1979) and The Constitution of Society (1984) brought him international fame on the sociological arena. The most recent stage concerns modernity, globalization and politics, especially the impact of modernity on social and personal life. This stage is reflected by his critique of postmodernity, and discussions of a new "utopian-realist"[2] third way in politics, visible in the Consequence of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Beyond Left and Right (1994) and The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998). Giddens' ambition is both to recast social theory and to re-examine our understanding of the development and trajectory of modernity.

Giddens was born and raised in Edmonton, London, and grew up in a lower middle-class family, son of a clerk with London Transport. He was the first member of his family to go to university. He got his first academic degree from Hull University in 1959, and later took a Master's degree from the London School of Economics, followed by a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1974. In 1961 he started working at the University of Leicester where he taught social psychology. At Leicester, which was considered to be one of the seedbeds of British sociology, he met Norbert Elias and began to work out his own theoretical position. In 1969 he was appointed to a position at the University of Cambridge, where he later helped create the Social and Political Sciences Committee (SPS), a sub-unit of the Faculty of Economics.
Giddens worked for many years at Cambridge and was eventually promoted to a full professorship in 1987. He is cofounder of Polity Press (1985). From 1997 to 2003 he was director of the London School of Economics and a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research. He was also an adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair; it was Giddens whose "third way" political approach has been Tony Blair's (and Bill Clinton's) guiding political idea. He has been a vocal participant in British political debates, supporting the center-left Labour Party with media appearances and articles (many of which are published in New Statesman). Giddens is a regular contributor to the research and activities of progressive think-tank Policy Network. He was given a life peerage in June 2004, as Baron Giddens, of Southgate in the London Borough of Enfield and sits in the House of Lords for Labour.
[edit] Ideas
Giddens, the author of over 34 books and 200 articles, essays and reviews has contributed and written about most notable developments in the area of social sciences, with the exception of research design and methods. He has written commentaries on most leading schools and figures and has used most sociological paradigms in both micro and macrosociology. His writings range from abstract, metatheoretical problems to very direct and 'down-to-earth' textbooks for students. Finally, he is also known for his interdisciplinary approach: he has commented not only on the developments in sociology, but also in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, social work and most recently, political science. In view of his knowledge and works, one may view much of his life's work as a form of 'grand synthesis' of sociological theory.
[edit] The nature of sociology
Before 1976, most of Giddens's writings offered critical commentary on a wide range of writers, schools and traditions. Giddens took a stance against the then-dominant functionalism (represented by Talcott Parsons, exponent of Weber), as well as criticizing evolutionism and historical materialism. In Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), he examined the work of Weber, Durkheim and Marx, arguing that despite their different approaches each was concerned with the link between capitalism and social life. Giddens emphasised the social constructs of power, modernity and institutions, defining sociology as "the study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three centuries."
In New Rules of Sociological Method (1976) (the title of which alludes to Durkheim's Rules of the Sociological Method of 1895) Giddens attempted to explain 'how sociology should be done' and addressed a long-standing divide between those theorists who prioritise 'macro level' studies of social life - looking at the 'big picture' of society - and those who emphasise the 'micro level' - what everyday life means to individuals. In New Rules... he noted that the functionalist approach, invented by Durkheim, treated society as a reality unto itself, not reducible to individuals. He rejected Durkheim's sociological positivism paradigm, which attempted to identify laws which will predict how societies will operate, without looking at the meanings understood by individual actors in society. He contrasted Durkheim with Weber's approach - interpretative sociology - focused on understanding agency and motives of individuals. Giddens is closer to Weber then Durkheim, but in his analysis he rejects both of those approaches, stating that while society is not a collective reality, nor should the individual be treated as the central unit of analysis.[3] "Society only has form, and that form only has effects on people, insofar as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do".[4] Rather he uses the logic of hermeneutic tradition (from interpretative sociology) to argue for the importance of agency in sociological theory, claiming that human social actors are always to some degree knowledgeable about what they are doing. Social order is therefore a result of some pre-planned social actions, not automatic evolutionary response. Sociologists, unlike natural scientists, have to interpret a social world which is already interpreted by the actors that inhabit it. Thus, there is a "Duality of structure", according to Giddens. With that he means that social practice, which is the principal unit of investigation, has both a structural and an agency-component: The structural environment constrains individual behaviour, but also makes it possible. He also notes the existence of a specific form of a social cycle: once sociological concepts are formed, they filter back into everyday world and change the way people think. Because social actors are reflexive and monitor the ongoing flow of activities and structural conditions, they adapt their actions to their evolving understandings. As a result, social scientific knowledge of society will actually change human activities. Giddens calls this two-tiered, interpretive and dialectical relationship between social scientific knowledge and human practices the "double hermeneutic".
Giddens also stressed the importance of power, which is means to ends, and hence is directly involved in the actions of every person. Power, the transformative capacity of people to change the social and material world, is closely shaped by knowledge and space-time.[5]
In New Rules... Giddens specifically wrote[6] that:
Sociology is not about a 'pre-given' universe of objects, the universe being constituted or produced by the active doings of subjects.
The production and reproduction of society thus has to be treated as a skilled performance on the part of its members.
The realm of human agency is bounded. Men produce society, but they do so as historically located actors, and not under conditions of their own choosing.
Structures must be conceptualized not only as constraints upon human agency, but also as enablers.
Processes of structuration involve an interplay of meanings, norms and power.
The sociological observer cannot make social life available as 'phenomenon' for observation independently of drawing upon his knowledge of it as a resource whereby he constitutes it as a 'topic for investigation'.
Immersion in a form of life is the necessary and only means whereby an observer is able to generate such characterizations.
Sociological concepts thus obey a double hermeneutic.
In sum, the primary tasks of sociological analysis are the following: (1) The hermeneutic explication and mediation of divergent forms of life within descriptive metalanguages of social science; (2) Explication of the production and reproduction of society as the accomplished outcome of human agency.